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To revamp the '63s cost Chrysler $125 million, but it was worth every penny. Over the U.S. as a whole, Chrysler's share of domestic car sales has gone from a postwar low of 9.6% with its '625 to nearly 11.6% with the '63s. If this percentage gain is held all year, it could mean a $350 million increase in Chrysler's sales. Already it has virtually ensured that Chrysler's 1962 earnings will be at least $50 million. In response, Wall Street has bid Chrysler's stock up from its 1962 low of 38 to last week's 74.
Exotic Gardener. Despite all the energy he gives to Chrysler, Townsend gets home to his unpretentious ranch house in suburban Bloomfield Township almost every night for dinner and seldom brings work with him. "I've never been one who measures the quality of a job by the length of time applied thereto," he says. With his wife Ruth, whom he met at the University of Michigan, he is an avid indoor gardener, raising such exotic plants as orchids and sea grapes. Summer weekends they spend at their cabin on Byram Lake, 45 miles from home, where Townsend water-skis, boats and swims with his three sons.
In the office Townsend is a brusque, blunt executive who would rather duck into a man's office for a talk than use the telephone. With Townsend, says one hardworking Chrysler official, "the needle is always out—but always in good humor." Says Chairman George Love: "He has the rare capacity to persuade his associates to express opinions contrary to his own." Adds Love of his own relationship with Townsend: "Let's say Townsend has an uncle—an uncle with some experience m managing a pretty tough coal business. This uncle is looking over his nephew's shoulder because the uncle has invested $20 million of the family's money in his nephew's business." Love, so far, has found little need for uncle to second-guess nephew.
About Time. Despite his drastic clampdown on Chrysler's spending, Lynn Townsend has not mortgaged future growth for the sake of current profit. Next year the company will put 50 to 75 gas-turbine Chryslers into the hands of specially selected customers for testing—a step that Townsend hopes will give Chrysler a commanding lead in development of what may prove the auto engine of the future. But the impact of Townsend's turnaround is already apparent among those shrewdest of critics, the dealers. Says Sacramento Dealer Dalton Feldstein: "It's a new spirit, a new era—and it's about time."